Google Personalised!

Not only have Google (link) revised their UI to bring it back to good-olde-minimalism (by getting rid of the graphic tabs) and added Froogle (link) to their US front-page, but they’ve also introduced personalised searching to their labs (link). This rather exciting new feature allows you to develop a profile (which they promise won’t be used for marketing, but could be open to abuse) that helps the search engine return results useful to you.

See more commentary on Slashdot (link).
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Simputation for the Masses

Hot on the heels of the OQO is another PDA aimed at a slightly different market. The Simputer (link) aims to bridge the digital divide and bring the poor (of India especially) into the much-vaulted information age. Priced at less than INR10,000 (�187) it also enters the region where us poor EPSRC-funded research students can start thinking about splashing out, although it does lack easy extensibility, as it appears to not have an SD (or similar) expansion slot. And surely not even Indians really need a serial port on a PDA nowadays? Let’s see what the more advanced versions promised can offer.

For more commentary see Slashdot (link) or El Reg (link).
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OQO Still Vaporware?

OQO, the personal ultra portable computer, has been much-hyped for almost two years. I can still remember browsing it’s slick flash site back in my Junior Lab (8.14) days. But, according to Wired News (link), the company finally proved that the slate isn’t just an urban legend by coughing up a working demo unit.The product is due to be realeased in Fall 2004 for around $2,000. More details available on the website (link). Next thing we know, Duke Nukem Forever may finally be released…

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Rhyme and Reason – Peter Pindar

Constitutionally ill-suited
Scheme for EU constitution revived (With apologies to John Lennon and his Revolution)

They say they want a constitution.
Well, you know
We’re the ones who’ll have to pay.
There’s bound to be a diminution
In freedom, though,
No matter what they say.
The trouble is, British officials enforce each law
Which sunny Italians and people all ignore.

When criminal investigation
Makes judges like police
To make the law of every nation
Like that of Greece
Could just undermine the best.
With centralised agents who prosecute,
Let’s hope they ask questions before they shoot.

With harmonised EU taxation
More VAT -
How come fiscal co-ordination
Leaves CAP As a cuckoo in the nest?
As a cuckoo in the nest?
A strong constitution’s a healthy sign;
You stick to yours buddy, and I’ll keep mine.

Taken from the Sunday Telegraph (link).
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The Greats come to Oxford

Yesterday heralded the beginning of the Oxford Literary Festival (link), which runs until Sunday. All number of literary greats are speaking in town: from Seamus Heaney to Joanna Trollope (both on Friday, but — fortunately for those with rather diverse tastes — they don’t clash).

Looking for something to entertain on Friday night, Julian Fellows (8pm @ OU) would have been interesting, but sadly it’s sold out, leaving An Audience with Alastair Campbell as the only interesting possibility. (My interest in Gershwin probably couldn’t stand two hours of his jazz.) The question is: do I want to add �8 to Mr Campbell’s pockets?

Tickets are available from the Playhouse (link).
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Nano-Computers…?

Small form-factor (SFF) computers are all the rage at the moment. At first there was Shuttle (link); then followed the usual mass of cheap copies, developments, and wacky gadgets that mark any new fashion. I’ve had my eye on the Mini-ITX platform, as proffered by VIA, for a while. These diminunative 17 x 17cm motherboards are nicely packed with features and come in a range of products designed for media centre PCs, thin-clients, and network routers/firewalls. And it’s not just the size and the ports available: the VIA mobos run cool (some without any fans) and therefore quiet; so they’re ideal for projects. The variety of which can be seen at Mini-ITX.com (link). That community portal seems very popular, perhaps not least for its (rather expensive) on-line store, but credit to Walibe.com (link), who do rather seem to get all the news first. EPIA Center (link) is another good site I’ve taken inspiration from. As great as the projects look — and undoubtedly how great a case I could knock up — some of the available Mini-ITX cases look fabulous: most obviously those from the Gloucestershire-based Hoojum (link). What is most exciting is they have recently revealed (@ Cebit) their new Nanode machines based on VIA’s up-and-coming Nano-ITX platform, which at 12 x 12cm is even smaller than their current mobos. There is already a range of dreamy photos building up online (link).

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Maxwell’s Demon Beaten (2)

Finally cracked the whole processing problem; a problem that could very well be avoided if: (a) Maxwell had reasonable capabilities to export graphic plots; or (b) Maxwell had a sensible way to export data. Either way, I’ve had to tackle it by brute-force (which always seems the way these days, as software diverges from decent standards), and the solution isn’t that pretty.

Firstly, I’ve had to use a little utility (link) dowloaded from the internet to do a quick search & replace on the ‘-NoSoln-‘ term that the Maxwell oh-so-helpfully inserts into the data. Handling the strings is possible in MatLab, but with 90k+ lines of data, any data conversion rather grinds to a halt; so simply nullifying all the text-filled lines outside of MatLab seemed simplest, although it did defeat my goal of having everything run from a single command. (If I could find a command line DOS search & replace tool this would be possible by having MatLab call the external program, but Google just throws up dead links to files.)

Then, MatLab can quickly textread the file (skipping the two header lines, of course), work out the size of the intended matrix and finally reshape the list to the desired form. Colormaps can then be produced using image and the data messing about to one’s heart’s desire: for example, the plot of the (arbitrarily-scaled) dielectrophoretic force for the side-gated electrodes below.

Next step: do some work.

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